New elementary report cards to contain more, better assessments

Everybody likes to bring home those A's and B's on their report cards.

But a new style of report card is coming out next month for Lawrence elementary students that goes far beyond the old-style letter grades.

How extensive is it?

On a fourth-grade report card, instead of just getting a single letter grade for language arts, the report card has 18 other boxes to measure students' academic progress - in such areas as vocabulary, comprehension and writing. In addition to the traditional letter grade for each subject, assessments such as E for "exhibits consistent strength in the standards/indicators" will be given for subordinate categories.

And then on the back of the report card are 15 more boxes that measure a student's classroom behavior, detailing skills ranging from listening to following directions to turning work in on time.

The new progress reports were given high marks by Lawrence's school board Monday night.

"This is so much more and better information than I remember getting," said Sue Morgan, board president.

Rich Minder, another board member, said he remembers getting only one letter in behavior - in citizenship.

The new report cards are coinciding with another major grading change in Lawrence - going to trimester reports, rather than quarterly reports, said Tom Christie, executive director of educational programming and curriculum.

Christie and Terri Durgan, a fourth-grade teacher at Quail Run School, explained that the new report cards have been developed over the last five years by "cadres" of Lawrence teachers. And Christie said Durgan also got input from educational experts around the country during that time.

Two thoughts: 1. Good grade card.....parents need more information and the most important event to track is reading skills. If you cannot read by age 10, your life is, at worst, over, and at best you are in serious trouble unless you catch up.

Bullying is a crime which must be stopped early; schools are required by law to report all crimes which happen at school; after that, they can take appropriate disciplinary actions. Stopping bullying is serious business. Many of the adult criminals this group likes to discuss were either bullies or bullied when young.

Sounds wonderful. BUT, just as in the school district in which I teach, where we have had this type of report card for at least a dozen years, parents will quickly begin complaining that it's too complicated and that they just want their As, Bs, and Cs back. And they won't stop complaining no matter how much time passes.